The Education Business Blog

Smart Board vs. Promethean - Dueling Electronic Whiteboards at NECC

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:07:23 -0600

Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) are all the rage in education right now. Market penetration is about 15% of classrooms and climbing like a rocket. Is it time for publishers to jump on this bandwagon? If so, which digital whiteboard is right for you?

I spent the better part of my time at the National Education Computing Conference (#NECC09) in Washington DC this week attending presentations put on by Smart Technologies and Promethean. My goal was to evaluate whether PCI Education should embrace these tools as part of our publishing plan.

The Good

I'm excited about what IWB's can do for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) (the market PCI serves). The ability to project large images and the engagement that comes with directly interacting with the media have the potential to improve instructional outcomes. The boards are kinesthetic, visual, and with the addition of speakers even auditory. All students can benefit from this, but IDD students in particular should get a boost.

Both companies have created on-line spaces where teachers can share lessons they have created. Promethean has the edge here - they have over 350,000 teachers in their community Promethean Planet, making it one of the largest on-line teacher communities in the world. Smart's Teachers Hub is smaller but has a nice mix of resources and professional development.

Another very strong development is a range of tools that are platform independent. One of the metaphors that the white board companies are batting around is that their toolsets (IWBs, response systems/clickers, and audio projection systems) are the "operating system of the classroom." The problem from a customer standpoint and a publisher standpoint is that realistically you only want to support one OS. RM's Easyteach has long had a suite of tools that run on any board. Promethean is promising that if you develop with their tools that the projects can run on other's boards. From a publisher's perspective this is good - but the reality is that few schools will want to invest in a white board which includes software and then go buy a different system. A solution exists today - but for this market to mature more work remains in this area.

The Bad

The tools are still evolving. Many of the examples that I saw were eerily like HyperCard projects from 15 years ago. The gap is that there isn't very much database functionality behind all this - just a flip chart based screen by screen metaphor. Both companies will kick me for saying this - but the closest application to what they provide today is PowerPoint.

Doing animations, and creating interactions seems to involve a series of tricks and work-arounds. Teachers who embrace the technology won't have any difficulty mastering these techniques - but for the rest of the world the tools are not quite as robust as they need to be for easy local authoring. With the amount of investment going into this space it is only a matter of time before the products mature.

If I were in the white board companies' shoes I'd go buy HyperStudio and build out from there. If I were a teacher and wanted to author a bunch of stuff this is the tool I'd use. Maybe a new entrant like Polyvision's Eno will will do this - they seem to be willing to break the mold and they don't have too much invested in a proprietary tool set.

Very little energy has gone into protecting copyrighted materials even as both companies are wooing publishers. Digital Rights Management is a hornets nest and I can understand why the white board providers want to shy away from it. I'd give the edge to Promethean on this one - they have created a "safe" mode where a publisher can release materials but local printing can be blocked (even screen scraping).

A side note - in many cases this is not an issue of the publisher wanting to place unreasonable restrictions on the use of materials. For a lot of older content they simply don't have the rights for open digital distribution.

The Ugly

As Doug Stein wrote on this blog recently the biggest danger of focusing on IWBs is that without systematic reform and professional development it reinforces the Sage on the Stage teacher role.

At its root the competitive arena is a complete rehash of the Mac vs. Windows battles of the early 90's.

The companies are going at each other with the same arguments that Apple and IBM/Microsoft used. Smart touts their worldwide market share (60%) and the need for kids to use the same tools they will encounter in the workplace (see IBM PC marketing). Promethean pushes the meme that their tools are designed specifically for education and are therefore more appropriate for schools (see Apple education marketing). On this one I have to side with Promethean. Their tools do look much more appropriate for the classroom and their student response system (clickers) are much more advanced for input and assessment.

On the customer side we are seeing administrators make the same mistake of assuming that the technology in and of itself has some magical quality that will change and improve what happens in the classroom. In many cases this is driven by a hard nosed career calculus - in the early '90's one of the most visible statements a new Superintendent could make was putting computers in schools. It was expensive, visible, and doable within the 3 year average job tenure they had. IWBs fit the same bill.

Sadly what we learned was that technology without extensive professional development changed absolutely nothing. This was the real lesson those who want to learn from history should take away from this battle. Fortunately Secretary Duncan appears to get this and while he has touted white boards as something ARRA funds should go towards he has also stressed the need for training.

Summary

What do I recommend?

Publishers should start working with IWB toolsets and figuring out the design challenges associated with creating interactive content in large screen format. IWBs are here to stay and their penetration into classrooms is going to climb. Getting familiar with the tools and how your materials can be developed so they are IWB friendly is important. I'd pick one of the cross-platform toolsets - Promethean or RM - or even just work in PowerPoint or HyperStudio.

On the school side I think both solutions are viable although I'd skew towards the Promethean solution since they are so focused on just the education market. It shows in their on-line resources, their development tools, their peripherals, and in the maturity of their approach to the market. New entrants like Polyvision's Eno also deserve a close look - they have a smaller footprint in the classroom and on your budget.

Gag Me With a Mission Statement - Friday Curmudgeon Edition

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:26:49 -0600

If you want to be taken seriously in the age of social media you have to speak authentically or people won't believe you. Your marketing messages are a promise. I've written about delivering on that promise. Today I want to focus on the words.

For the promise to be taken seriously the words you choose are just as important as the message they carry. If you dress it up too much you sound like you are selling - and almost no one is buying that any more.

Being authentic is scary. We have to reveal something of ourselves. We become accountable to others. But in an ocean of hype authentic voices are winning the day (blogs, wikis, Twitter) because people are hungry for genuine human connections.

In the end it comes down to respect. If you respect your customers you talk to them like adults (even when they are kids).

Consider this choice:

Company A - "Our Business Associates drive for extraordinary customer delight and win-win synergistic partnership solutions."
Company B - "When you buy from us we want you to be happy. If you are not, here are three ways you can let us know about it..."

Who ya gonna call?

In the education market people fall into this trap when we tie ourselves in knots trying to satisfy every politically correct usage we can think of. A lot of our marketing copy reads like it was written by a committee of committees. Strive for making clear understandable promises in authentic language - and then focus everything you have on fulfilling those promises.

That is the path to success today.

What set me off this time? In the San Antonio Airport this morning a promotional announcement about the Riverwalk made reference to "Tex-Mex Cuisine." Tex-Mex is grub, eats, cocina, hell it is just plain "food." But cuisine? Please don't put tacos and beans in a leotard and white face. Fake words = fake promise.

While we are on the subject of Tex-Mex if you want the real deal visit El Mirador the next time you are in San Antonio. Steve Gatland of MDR swears by their smoky salsa.

And another thing about false promises - to the folks at Boingo Hot Spots [no link for annoying morons] - the forced advertisement we have to see before we pay 10 bucks for your buggy wi-fi is not a "Welcome Screen." You've managed to take an annoying "monetization" of our time and insult us as well.

Idiots.

Will ARRA Education Stimulus Funds Be Used For Change Or Propping Up the Status Quo?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:03:43 -0600

Doug Stein of Memespark has some commentary to share on ARRA and innovation.

By Guest Blogger Doug Stein

I don’t know if you saw this article. It details how one district is spending the ARRA education stimulus money:

Most of the 6.5 million will be spent to keep teachers in place
1.4 million in Title I will be used to outfit all K-5 classrooms in Title I schools with:

SMARTboards
Clickers
Audio systems
FASTT Math (Tom Snyder’s LAN-based system)

SMARTboards in all 9th grade remedial Algebra and English
$51,700 to hire one technology teacher to train the other teachers…

In other words, nothing much will change in how they educate. SMARTboards are a great *sustaining* innovation that (with the right software) makes the “sage on the stage” more engaging (and hopefully more effective). Unfortunately, in themselves they won’t help drive disruptive innovations such as adaptive or differentiated instruction.

Multiply this by thousands of districts and we’ll have spent a lot of money putting lipstick (and Chanel) on the pig.

To be fair, the one-time nature of the money would mitigate against using it to fund long-term programs; it’s always easiest to spend one-time money on things where you can point-and-grunt to prove you didn’t’ waste it. I’m still hoping some insightful districts will use it instead to “lubricate” the transition to better educational models.

[Lee's note: I'm hoping many companies also use the one time boost in sales to respond to the disruptive changes the industry is facing regardless of the economic climate. This is an opportunity to drive change for our customers and for ourselves.]

Hacking Education - A Publisher's Perpsective

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:03:00 -0600

How can technology and innovation reshape education? Union Square Ventures put on Hacking Education - a conference that brought educators and entrepreneurs together to hash this out. Unfortunately they didn't have any practitioners from the education technology and publishing industries there. After reviewing the well written summary of the discussion I put together the following extended comment to add the perspective of someone who was there, did that, and got the t-shirts.

As someone who has spent the last 18 years in the Education Technology and Instructional Materials businesses I feel the commentary misses the mark from a business perspective. This isn't a critique of what was was covered - many of the participants are people I admire and cite frequently - Danah Boyd, Fred Wilson, Katie Salen, Steven Johnson , NT Etuk etc. It is meant to talk specifically about the business challenges of translating these great ideas into practice.

It might be tempting to dismiss folks who have been in the trenches as old school - people who "don't get it" - but some of us are not clinging to old paradigms but working hard to create new ones. Experience may blind us to new possibilities - but it may also guide you around some of the land mines many of us have already stepped on.

Most of us who have followed this path have been guilty of advocating massive changes through technology. Sometimes this takes the form the kind of carpet bombing Danah talks about - just throw enough CPUs/Bandwidth etc at the problem and it will magically happen. Other times it is the old saw about having a hammer and the world looking like a nail - see game based learning.

Both approaches share four problems:

1. They never address the scale issue. You can always find success with a few small experiments. If you have been around the market you see the same examples trotted out again and again. As a sales rep for Apple 18 years ago I told stories exactly like Gepettos. They are heart warming inspirational tales of learning and adventure - they are not a scalable business model.

We educate 54 million children in this country - develop a solution that will work for more than 500 at a time and you have something. Remember that in most communities the school system is the first or second largest employer. We spend $550 billion a year on education in the US - second only to the military. You can't run from the scale issue if you want to create businesses that serve the market as opposed to a very narrow niche.

2. Educational practice evolves incrementally and nothing ever goes away. Video games will have a huge impact on learning (they already are) but they are just one more tool in the bag. When a teacher uses and interactive white board it is the functional equivalent of scratching charcoal on a cave wall.

I believe we are at an inflection point and that education is ready for real technology substitution (see this in depth series here about it) but it will probably take a different form in education than it has in our personal media diet.

The most interesting design challenge in our market today is designing systems of instructional products (print, tech, professional development, social media) that amplify and compliment each other. To date most of the energy has gone into siloed products created by technologists or print publishers without any meaningful cross over. Most print publishers create technology that attempts to recreate the book experience on-line - snore. Most technologists are on a mission to kill traditional practices. Both miss what educators are asking for - blended products that use the best of all media.

3. The user developed content model assumes a motivated learner. On-line classes work best for the same students traditional correspondence courses worked for - i.e. not your potential drop outs but those with an extra dose of motivation. See item 1 - I've seen dozens of businesses that were able to get a few hundred users doing creative and interesting learning on-line that were never able to scale up.

Apex Learning which does on-line classes finally settled on AP level courses because those students work well for the environment. The rest of our learners need an actively involved coach and guide to work with them - a teacher. Products that are designed for a blended environment are the scalable answer for broad numbers of students - some on-line some real world.

The group talked about how kids are required to attend school by law. You also need to factor in that schools are required by law to educate all kids, including the ones who don't want to be there. It is a two way street. Innovative materials can go a long way towards addressing this - Tabula Digita's Algebra games are a great example of using technology to improve engagement with the content. UGC won't magically help these kids.

4. Poorly designed economics. Every time an idea runs into problems addressing scale or market needs people start talking about the home school market followed by the private school market. My BS meter goes off whenever I see this in a business plan (or comment thread). These are sizable markets - but each is only about 10% of the whole in students and considerably less than that in dollars. From a distribution standpoint they are also the most diffuse - making it extremely expensive to reach them for very small sales.

The web is definitely helping here, but at the end of the day if you are only going after these segments you are not hacking education - you are chipping away at the fringes. The biggest change will come from working with public schools to address the needs of a broad range of learners.

Christiansen's work would tell you that these are the markets where the innovation will occur first, but I'm not convinced. I think there are segments of the public system where disruptive changes can flourish - ELL and Special Education are two examples. Traditional materials don't work for these kids (disclosure - I'm CEO of a Special Ed Publisher).

Atomized Instructional Content as a Business Model

Another idea that runs into problems with the economics is atomized content. There has been a huge amount of buzz around this for the past few years - the idea being that if we can just turn instructional materials into the equivalent of iTunes teachers will be free to pick and choose the best bits and assemble them in meaningful ways.

This is a very seductive concept but misses an important distinction about educational content. A lesson structure is a bit like an operating system on a computer. If cut/copy/paste are done differently in every application it is very difficult to scale a platform. The user can't use a common base of experience to manage other tools. The same holds true for instructional materials. I'm not advocating traditional textbooks but something in between. Strands of content that can drop in for a week or two rather than an entire years worth.

Try this thought experiment from a business perspective. Assume you have a front line supervisor who has 25 direct reports. Best practice would argue for between 5-8 reports. How much time will that Supervisor have to think strategically about the business? Now imagine that they are required to submit daily and weekly progress reports on all 25 employees - no slacking off on a few of them for a week or two. This is your average teacher. They don't have time to assemble mix tapes of content for all their students.

This conference asked all the right questions. But Education is not a mirror of other markets. I stopped reading the newspaper and my life became richer through social media and blogs. But I can't imagine my kids getting a great education (as they have) if it was left up to our family to sort it out on our own. We need an educational system and if you want to build a business (at least in the near term of the next 5-10 years) you will need to find your entry point into the one that exists.

This is an enormously interesting time to be in the education market. We share the belief that the ultimate killer app is learning - the mind is wired for it. The businesses that can re-engineer publishing to support 21st Century learners and educators will have a bright future.

Related Blog Posts

Education Marketing 101 - A four part primer on entering the K12 Education Market.

Technology Substitution and Textbooks 4 part series

10 Ideas for Building Education Products for 21st Century Learners part of the Information Overload series

NCLB Reauthorization Advice from a Parent Advocate

Fri, 22 May 2009 11:44:08 -0600

Ann Foster of Parents for Public Schools has a great post about the pending No Child Left Behind reauthorization. She is a former school board member and presents a good balanced view of some of the key issues that need to be addressed.

In particular I appreciate her focus on the problems of including most Special Education students in the regular testing regime. She writes:

But perhaps the biggest travesty of all involved the most challenged and vulnerable students in the school district – children with physical and mental disabilities – which in some cases included those who could not even sit up. Sure, there was a provision in the NCLB law that allowed districts to exclude a certain percentage of special education students. But it had no relation to the number of special education students in the district. As a result, some children had to take the test who should have never been required to. It was cruel and unusual punishment. And it should never have happened.

Hear hear.

She also covers high-qualified teacher requirements, unfunded mandates, and other issues that Congress should deal with fairly this time around.

This Can't Be Good - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Credit Rating Removed

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:30:21 -0600

Moodys* has completely withdrawn credit ratings for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) after downgrading it to high risk just last month. This action means Moodys believes there is a high probability of default. From a practical standpoint this means that it will be harder and more expensive to service the company's $6.7 billion in debt on $2.1 billion in revenue.

According to the Irish Times the rationale was:

"the business risk and competitive position of the company versus others within its industry; the capital structure and financial risk of the company; the projected financial and operating performance of the company over the near-to-intermediate term, and management’s track record and tolerance for risk,”

Ouch.

The timing is particularly inauspicious as stimulus funds for education are just starting to show up in purchases of instructional materials. This should accelerate rapidly into June and July.

If the company is going to fail, it is in the interest of schools and the publishing industry that it happen as gracefully as it can. Many of the lenders have already agreed to relaxed terms which is a good sign.

How HMH would break up and be absorbed by the other industry leaders is an interesting question. There would be obvious questions about anti-trust issues since so much consolidation has already occurred in the industry. The many venerable imprints and popular materials would continue to hold value so they would ultimately find a home, probably with some kind of private equity play. The question would be at what price in this market?

Hopefully for all our friends at HMH the tide will turn once the ARRA money is flowing.

*Moodys requires a free account to access information on their site.

My Point Exactly - The STORY of Stuff

Tue, 12 May 2009 07:21:29 -0600

Serendipitously the New York Times published a front page article yesterday about "The Story of Stuff", a short movie about man's impact on the environment. It makes the point I was after in Sunday's post about the power of story-line in instructional materials. The movie has gone viral globally (7 million views) because it encapsulates the lesson in a broader narrative that kids (and grown ups) can connect to their own lives.

Some quotes from the article that support the contention that we can use stories more effectively in instruction and that we can trust kids to make up their own minds when given a chance to.

"...many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years."

"Mark Lukach, who teaches global studies at Woodside Priory, a Catholic college-preparatory school in Portola Valley, Calif., acknowledged that the film is edgy, but said the 20-minute length gives students time to challenge it in class after viewing it....Mr. Lukach’s students made a response video and posted it on YouTube, asking Ms. Leonard to scare them less and give them ideas on how to make things better. That in turn inspired high school students in Mendocino, Calif., to post an answer to Woodside, with suggested activities."

Ironically Missoula banned the movie because of something they call "academic freedom" but which is the direct opposite of it. They banned it because it is one sided and biased and isn't kind to Capitalism. Rather than bring in competing narratives and letting the kids decide (academic freedom) they prefer to have watered down he said/she said materials that sacrifice academic freedom to "balance." I'm confident Capitalism can withstand this little movie, too bad the burghers of Missoula think it is shakier than that.

Story-line in Textbooks and Video Games

Sun, 10 May 2009 15:06:05 -0600

If you don't think story-line matters in instructional materials just look at the pie fight over evolution in Texas. At its root this is a battle over which story we use to make sense of how we got here. Advocates on both sides will be unhappy with this characterization - for them the fight is over the truth. My goal in this piece is not to take sides in this argument (I do have one) but to talk about the power of story-line in instruction.

"And The Moral of the Story Is..."

Theories, metaphors, legends, myths, etc. are all attempts to impose order on our perception of the world. These stories give us a shared shorthand to help us make decisions about how to think and act. Without the moment of "oh this is like the time when x did y in the story about z" we'd forever be stuck deciding what to do next - stories help us be efficient. It is so wired that our brains even make up stories when we are sleeping - dreams may not make literal sense to our left brain but our pattern seeking right brain has the steering wheel during those hours.

One of the challenges of publishing in a world of standards designed by committees is that it is often hard to detect the broad story-line since those standards represent a series of compromises. This is particularly problematic in arenas where fundamental questions are discussed (like evolution). We end up with the intellectual equivalent of milk toast rather than chewy rye.

This is very similar to the critiques heard frequently in the blogosphere about the "he said she said" nature of TV reporting where every issue has to have two equal sides. As Daniel Moynihan quipped "people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts." The credibility of TV reporting suffers because we know at a deep level that the way they present things is not real. Many instructional materials suffer from the same credibility destroying "balance."

If we look outside of education at the arenas where people get their information they are all dominated by story-lines - TV, books, video games, movies, blogs, and arguably twitter (@ingenbio is active again - great use of twitter to tell a story). But - when we publish textbooks we run from story-lines to avoid controversy.

The Problem

As a publisher, the business case for avoiding many story-lines (and the controversy that comes with them) is pretty compelling. We can't afford to alienate factions on the decision making committees. Bland is safe. Publishers are lining up to print something that will cover the bases in Texas.

Many educators are wary of stories because they have frequently been used to impose one perspective. This approach can stray into outright propaganda. Just because something is presented as a story-line does not mean it is true, or good, or useful (the Nazi's had a strong story-line).

But, looking at it from an instructional perspective, avoiding story-line removes one of the most powerful teaching tools we have. Story-line taps a fundamental structure of the mind. We end up with a meandering thread of facts and fictions that don't hang together.

We end up with the modern textbook. Meh.

Fear vs. Trust

It strikes me that the motivating force to avoiding strong story-lines in instructional materials is fear. Fear that learners will accept as truth ideas which we might see as dangerous. Fear that the teacher won't be equipped to get students to probe deeply and develop critical thinking. Fear that a teacher will propagandize students. Fear that we will lose the sale to a safer alternative. Fear that our world view might not be as solid as we want/need it to be.

Actions motivated by fear almost always make the world a smaller place. Bland instructional materials avoid controversy, but they are not as effective as they could be. In the global economy we can't afford to sacrifice effectiveness to fear.

The opposite of this kind of fear is trust. Trust that learners can critically judge information. Trust that teachers will respect different view points. Trust that our worldview can be challenged and that we can grow if needed. Trust that our materials will be effective enough that we can win business against "safer" alternatives. When we trust our world gets larger but we wade into controversy, we embrace debate, and we challenge ourselves to grow. This isn't always fun, but it is more effective in the long run because it makes us stronger.

Most schools expose students to the story-line the Nazi's spun along with the facts of what transpired when people acted on it. There is deep learning in this approach. In this case, presenting them with the story and facts serves as an intellectual inoculation. If we shrink in fear that some students might find that story compelling (sadly some will) we avoid the larger benefit of a shared understanding that we need to fight this kind of thinking when we encounter it again (sadly we will).

Reading the Tea Leaves

I suspect we will see strong story-lines creeping back in via non-traditional media first. Look to formats like video games which are inherently story telling platforms (even if it is as silly as getting the jewels from the lobster people to free the princess). I believe the engagement that comes from a good story is part of the reason games have shown disproportionate impact on struggling learners - the story gives their mind something to adhere to as the learning is going on. This binding thread is missing in the textbooks which have failed these students.

As starting points look to Chris Dede's work on River City or Constance Steinkuhler's work on scientific discourse in World of Warcraft for more on this. Go visit the nutrition area on Whyville where students get their avatars purposely ill to learn what healthy eating looks liike. Heck - look at the enduring success of Oregon Trail.

This isn't an easy problem to solve. Traditional publishers will follow the lead of the market even when there is compelling evidence to support change. Educators operate in a political arena that makes controversial innovation difficult.

What should Texas do regarding the Evolution controversy? If we operate from trust students should be exposed to all the competing story-lines and they should be presented in their strongest contexts (e.g. evolution in the science classroom, creationism in comparative religion). From this robust exchange students should be free to weave their own story together in a way that makes their lives meaningful. If we don't trust them to do this we make their world a smaller place.

-----------

Relevant Excerpt - "Many (not all) low performing students don't have a story thread in their lives that helps motivate them to grind in school (doing homework). Students who are high achievers generally have a story line that is central to their identity that gives the grind meaning and a purpose. Without that story line much school work is just tedium."

----------- Other Resources

"The Power of Story: Teaching Through Storytelling" (Rives Collins, Pamela J. Cooper)

"The Power of Story: Change Your Story, Change Your Destiny in Business and in Life" (Jim Loehr)

Twitter Peeves 'n Raves - #1

Tue, 05 May 2009 07:22:33 -0600

We are collectively discovering the value of social media tools like Twitter. As we do this we wander blind alleys and make surprising discoveries. Forthwith a peeve and a rave about micro-blogging.

Peeve - People who tweet that they are about to do something. So what? How about you tweet after you have done it and have something interesting to say. "I'm off to the mall" Fascinating - yawn.

Rave - Genuine kudos handed out freely. Yesterday a friend (@perludus) had to return a pair of shoes. He tweeted "Three cheers for @Footwise! Returned my shoes that wore through the sole in 2 months w/no questions asked!" Positive energy put into the system always comes back to you. It also makes others feel positive about the world. All that in 140 characters - cool.

Bonus Round

Peeve - Overposting. I now routinely check the tweet thread of people I might follow to see how frequently they post. Any more than a couple of times a day and forget it. Sorry - no one is that interesting. (An occasional burst when you are live tweeting an event is fine.)

Rave - Breaking News (@breakingnews). Get headlines long before they show up on mainstream web news sites.

Productivity Tip - Treat twitter like a room with friends in it. When you are busy elsewhere you don't hear the conversation and that is just fine. When you can drop by you get to hear what is going on and chime in. If you try to experience it like email where you have to see every tweet you will develop the twitter twitch (twittcher?).

Academics and Low Incidence Disabilities

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:49:15 -0600

One of the fundamental shifts No Child Left Behind (NCLB) caused in Special Education was accountability for teaching reading, math, science, and social studies.

Traditionally many Special Ed classrooms focused on life skills - the functional skills students with intellectual disabilities need to live as independently as they can. Academics were not the focus. Because students in SPED are now tested and factored into schools' AYP calculations this has changed.

MAINSTREAM MATERIALS MISS THE MARK

Most mainstream publishers responded to this by "dumbing down" their existing textbooks and materials or adding a few accommodation and modification tips. Special Ed publishers had catalogs full of life skills products but were short on academics. The result has been a gap in resources to help educators teach academics and functional skills side by side.

With the exception of a couple of states, there also has not been any clear guidance on an appropriate scope and sequence for teaching academics to students with low incidence disabilities.

From what we understand of the priorities of the new administration, no matter what happens to NCLB in the reauthorization, this challenge will remain.

At root the mainstream publisher approach doesn't work because just taking the reading level down and providing some additional guidance in the Teacher's Guide doesn't solve the specific needs of these students. This may work well for students who are 1-2 grade levels behind - but any more than that and this approach breaks.

WHY?

There are a three primary reasons.

First - these students move at a different pace. Even when the accessibility of the materials is improved, the pacing remains the same as the mainstream materials. In many cases this isn't realistic. These students need to practice a skill 100 times not 10 in order to master it and retain it in long term memory.

Second - the repetition required for SPED isn't accounted for in the mainstream materials - not even close. As one of the speakers at this year's CEC stated "[students with intellectual disabilities] get bored too." This is why many of the life skills products traditionally have been engaging games or hands-on activities that stand up well to repeated use. Doing a worksheet for the 50th time isn't a lot of fun.

Third - even where highly qualified teachers are available, the person working directly with a student is often a paraprofessional. If the student has been mainstreamed, then the regular teacher may not be aware of the recommended differences in instructional approach. In both cases, instructional materials require more teacher scaffolding to be effective than that found in regular education products.

WHAT TO DO?

At PCI we are tackling this on multiple levels to help schools meet this challenge.

1. We are publishing comprehensive curricula that address the academic standards and seamlessly integrate life skills objectives. For example, our Environmental Print series coming out this summer teaches the meanings of common signs found around a community using stories and symbols while also addressing language arts standards. Students learn about main character and what to do when they see a Stop sign at the same time.

The PCI Reading Program is another option for those students who have not had success with Phonics or Whole Language instruction. It is a sight words program tailored specifically for students with developmental disabilities, autism, or significant learning disabilities.

Both programs come with direct instruction support for when the materials are being used by paraprofessionals.

2. Our new Academic Curriculum Framework is a curriculum framework aligned to states standards that provides guidance to educators about what should be covered in every grade for students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities.

3. For more specific needs, we create turnkey kits of materials aligned to standards that help address Language Arts, Math, Science, and/or Social Studies. Since we distribute over 7,500 products from 200 publishers in the Special Education space we can assemble a complete kit to fit virtually any need. We've even put a Turbo Solutions Builder on our website to allow educators to build these kits on their own.

We are finally starting to close the gap in materials and guidance to help educators meet the twin goals of teaching academic skills and life skills to low incidence populations.

Note: This post is related to my role at PCI Education.

Music Mix - Spring 08

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:05:15 -0600

This iTunes mix contains my favorite songs from the past two to three months. As usual it is a broad mix of tunes that caught my fancy. Brazilians Bajofondo kick if off (see the video if you get a chance). I took a couple of trips to the time machine to catch up on stuff I'd missed (Big Head Todd) and to enjoy old favorites (dare you to listen to Radar Love while driving and do the speed limit). Jason Collett is a new favorite and reading Clapton's biography got me to go back and listen to a lot of his stuff. Jackson brown tosses off the funniest lines I've heard in a song in a long time. Oxford Comma is for all my friends in publishing (explicit warning however..)

Enjoy.

To see earlier mixes select the Culture section in the topics list.

More iMixes from Lee

Winter 08-09
Summer 08
Winter 07-08
Spring 07

Doug Stein on Hope and Fear

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:43:24 -0600

Doug Stein of Memespark responded in comments to my last post and as usual his insights add a lot to the conversation and make the connection to education publishing more relevant and real. For that reason I've bumped this comment to its own post.

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By Doug Stein

The trickiest thing about being part of the solution when publishing instructional materials is that there are Balkanized sets of content standards which are disconnected from both job skills and survival skills. When you need to "surf to survive" (both rapid response to workplace change and rapid assimilation and integration of knowledge) it's pretty unsettling that the instructional materials market has to work with buying cycles and content standards that remain frozen for 6 year periods.

In the industrial age, hard assets (factories) were depreciated over 20 years - and employees often stayed in jobs that long or longer. Therefore 6 year cycles were quick enough.

Now, the writeoff period for capital goods is often 3 years or less (durations that used to be associated only with R&D groups) - with most people holding jobs for 5 years or less.

It seems we're all in for perpetual R&D - both in our lives and jobs and learning. Nonetheless, social networks (in cyberspace *and* meatspace) require stability. How can we steer between stultifying stasis and crippling chaos and instead have renewable rhythm?

Moreover, how can we bring along the increasingly marginalized segments of society? The world is too small to have royal wealth visible and cheek-by-jowl with grinding poverty. This is an unstable situation like a snow cornice on a mountinside after heavy snowfall. A little jostling can lead to a destructive avalanche.

Education is a far better means of improving the common man's lot than Robin Hood taxation and social policy.

I too am hopeful in the long run, but fear for another period of dislocation and ideological strife in an age of WMDs and asymmetric warfare.

Let's reverse a good lesson from the tactics of the terrorists and strive to change one subject, one grade level, one standard, one school district, one child's life for the better and use the grand engines of society to sift and communicate what works.

History, Poetry, Hope, & Fear

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:00:21 -0600

At 35,000 feet, with a steaming Starbucks and a purring iPod I read my Grandfather's memoirs last Wednesday. I'd already put in several hours of work when I decided to crack the sheaf of Xeroxed reflections written three years before he passed in 1964.

Ninety eight years ago in the summer of 1911 he was young Officer in Training in the English Army. Then poetry happened.

"I was on a march across Salisbury Plain in full regalia because we were going to sleep out that night. It turned out to be the hottest day on record and out of 600 more than 200 collapsed on the way. We were not a happy company, but we managed to bathe in the river when we reached out destination and that revived us. At night we lay down on the ground near the old ruins of Stone Henge, the oldest and most astonishing group of temple stones in England...The evenings are very short in England in summer and I think it was shortly after 4 in the morning when I was stamping around trying to get some circulation in my cold feet that I noticed the sun starting to rise over the old temple stones. At the same moment there was a racket and over the stones came one of the earliest aeroplanes in the world, the first I had seen and about 1,000 feet up. I was looking at a combination of the oldest and newest in the world. While I stood transfixed the motor of the plane conked out and the plane wobbled all over the place, but finally landed right side up. We rushed over and there was the pilot strapped in but shaking so hard he couldn't do a thing. We unstrapped him and laid him on the ground to carry on his shaking because he had had a close brush with death."

It was indeed one of the first. The British formed their first Airforce units in April 1911- the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers. They had a total 57 pilots - I'm assuming 56 after this incident.

Harry Wilson emigrated to Toronto in 1913 and as a result managed to avoid the generational genocide of 1914 and beyond. Almost all of his college friends perished in the war. The rest of the his story is woven through the 20th Century, moving to the US, pioneering research in Radio transmission, Mayor of his town during the Depression, Entrepreneur in his 50's and 60's.

It is easy to lose sight of how far we have come in so short a period of time. Ninety eight years from crash landings at dawn to email, coffee, and a book in the few short hours it takes to get from Austin to Seattle (with a stop for a sandwich in Denver).

Times are tough, and we have difficult choices to make, but the conditions of our existence have shifted so quickly in just two generations that it makes me optimistic for the day when this economic blip is over. In the long view we'll be just fine.

Its the short term that scares me. The 20th century was the most violent in our short history. MIllions perished in a long running war of ideas and money as we sorted out the best way to organize and control an industrialized society. In the ocean of dislocation that marked this era hateful ideologies took root and were tools of power for the greedy and delusional.

As we pass from industrial to information economy the dislocations will be no less jarring at an individual and national level. Witness the death of newspapers (ironically reported daily) which is both a social transition and a personal tragedy for those who made their living in the industry.

As our collective lives improve many individuals pay an extremely high price. Education in this context is not just about having the job skills to adapt, it also means having the social and networking skills to contribute to the well being of our friends, family, and the endless stream of strangers who touch our lives. This wisdom is both ancient and urgently modern.

If you publish instructional materials are you part of the solution?

Great Article on the History and Implications of Social Media

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:25:08 -0600

Danah Boyd - one of the most incisive thinkers about how new technology is reshaping our lives (and more importantly to readers of this blog the lives of teenagers) - was recently hired by Microsoft Research. She gave a talk that summarized at a high level the history of social media, how teens and adults use it differently, and policy and behavioral implications for all of us to consider.

Social Media Is Here to Stay - Now What?

Its brilliant. Go read it. It will only take about 15 minutes and you will learn something - I guarantee it.

Here are a few select nuggets:

"For users, Web2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends....While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways. Even tools like MySpace and Facebook which are typically labeled social networkING sites were never really about networking for most users. They were about socializing inside of pre-existing networks."
"Many who build technology think that a technology's feature set is the key to its adoption and popularity. With social media, this is often not the case. There are triggers that drive early adopters to a site, but the single most important factor in determining whether or not a person will adopt one of these sites is whether or not it is the place where their friends hangout."

"Social network sites became critically important to [teens] because this was where they sat and gossiped, jockeyed for status, and functioned as digital flaneurs...Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past."

"The key lesson from the rise of social media for you is that a great deal of software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users."

"Policy makers in this country are hell-bent on "solving" the safety problem, but what they're trying to fix is not what's really happening. Yet, in trying to address public fears, they run the risk of putting more kids in harm's way AND forcing companies to build technologies that would help no one. As parents, citizens, and a corporation, we have a responsibility to understand what is actually going on here. (One of the advantages of adult participation is that they're starting to grok what's really going on on these sites and the fears are subsiding.)"

"This is a systems problem. We are all implicated in it - as developers and policy makers, as parents and friends, as individuals and as citizens."

Am I Too Optimistic?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:09:45 -0600

Business Development work requires a certain suspension of disbelief to function smoothly. In the initial stages of any conversation both parties have to be open to undiscovered possibility. Often the most profitable opportunities only become clear after a false start or two.

I'm naturally optimistic and I allow myself to be seduced to new possibilities in initial meetings with potential partners. The positive side of this is that I've been involved in some creative and profitable deals that wouldn't have come off without a period of listening and exploration. The negative side is that it is very easy to send misleading signals to the other side who interpret your enthusiasm to engage as a leading indicator of a pending deal.

The Gullibility Paradox

This outlook creates a paradox because Business Development can't be allowed pull a business into time consuming distractions and strategic cul de sacs. You must be disciplined about the conversations you enter and how long you allow them to proceed before you bail out or engage. But unless you talk to people who are outside of the orbit of conventional wisdom you won't add much value in the long run.

It is common sense to be skeptical about any potential deal and to stay focused on your knitting. For the bulk of the managers in a business this is an imperative. But for those involved in Business Development your role is to explore the possibilities of an unknown future, and the skeptical approach in this specific context does not serve the needs of the business.

Roads Not Taken

I've seen the downside of not taking an optimistic approach.

In the mid-90's a major computer company approached the software company I worked for with an exploratory meeting. At the time we had a very close partnership with their chief rival. We were surprised when what was supposed to be a casual meeting of 2-3 people turned into a group of 10 on their side. My Business Development Manager went into the meeting with a mindset that discussion was pointless because of our other alliance and it came through in his words and body language. We didn't react to the signals that were coming our way and the conversation didn't go well.

Two months later they bought a rival for an absolutely ridiculous multiple on earnings.

I'm not sure if they would have bought us in the end - but we never got the chance to even have the conversation because we came into the meeting with our minds closed to the possibility.

The Solution - A Moving Scale

On the internationally accepted Eeyore to Tigger scale it helps to start every new conversation at about 75% Tigger. The closer to a real deal you get the more Eeyoreish you need to become.

I wrote about the Eeyore side in an article on Parnterships In Education - as you iron out details you need to assume that what can go wrong will go wrong (because, well, it will).

A Couple of Caveats

Does this mean you need to enter into conversations with people you don't trust? No - trust is the bedrock of any successful deal. Opening yourself up to entreaties from sleaze-balls isn't a business strategy, its a death wish.

Should you talk to anyone? No - there isn't enough time in the day to talk to everyone who comes your way. But at least for initial meetings you need to dial down your resistance to unusual approaches and opportunities. If there is a peripheral connection it can't hurt to listen for a few minutes. You might schedule a phone call instead of a dinner but you will learning something from every encounter if you are listening.

Conclusion

If you are involved in Business Development I encourage you to develop your openness to possibility from unusual sources. This is after all the essence of what you are trying to do - unearth opportunities that are profitable precisely because others have not discovered them yet.

If you can learn to manage your own outlook as you move through a deal you will surface the gems with optimism, and then negotiate a deal that can stand an encounter with the real world with skepticism.